Connotation is the association you automatically make with a word, including how the word makes you feel.
I can see the light! You’re such a dog! It’s finally spring- time for a new beginning.
These sentences each contain connotation, which is the association you automatically make with a word, including how the word makes you feel. When you read or hear a certain word, you might have an emotional response that comes with it that isn’t directly related to its dictionary definition (a word’s literal meaning is its denotation). For example, you might associate light with hope and happiness, while its true definition is just to make something visible. Or, spring might make you think of cute new baby animals and a fresh start while it is really just one of the four seasons following its course. See the pattern? There are general connotations used in poetry when the emotional meaning of a word is implied, but it is also possible for every person to make different associations from another person when it comes to certain words. Like, if you got food poisoning from that gas station sushi, you might have a strong emotional response to the word “sushi” and its connotation would be negative for you while another person might associate it with happiness if it is their favorite food. Connotation is used to give deeper meanings to words and phrases without actually having to add additional words since the feelings are implied.
*in voice of psychiatrist* So, how do these poems make you feel?
Despair
BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
I have experienc'd
The worst, the World can wreak on me--the worst
That can make Life indifferent, yet disturb
With whisper'd Discontents the dying prayer--
I have beheld the whole of all, wherein
My Heart had any interest in this Life,
To be disrent and torn from off my Hopes
That nothing now is left. Why then live on ?
That Hostage, which the world had in it's keeping
Given by me as a Pledge that I would live--
That Hope of Her, say rather, that pure Faith
In her fix'd Love, which held me to keep truce
With the Tyranny of Life--is gone ah ! whither ?
What boots it to reply ? 'tis gone ! and now
Well may I break this Pact, this League of Blood
That ties me to myself--and break I shall !
Factory
BY MARK BIBBINS
He can say it was a painting
He can say we were the painting
Or that the painting wasn’t painting
And that we only happen to ourselves
We can say we kept things running
by distracting ourselves
from the hideous truth
of how things run
That we were broken
That we lingered near a broken factory
That we had broken
We can say that the disappointment
of slicing into a leek
and not finding the requisite layers
but a thick white inedible core
is not the disappointment
of approaching a sleeping animal
only to learn that it is dead
but it does nudge one slightly
further into despair
We said despair
We meant the strings of impossible
instruments that they made
in the factory
That we had seen
That were broken
That there were different paintings
That could be played as songs
We had seen other things
That we had seen
That had come unstrung
and blown between adjacent bridges
whose river had presented us a city
That was broken
That we had been
That we were broken
That was our city
This was our city
that was a song replaying itself in the dark
